A multifunctional peripheral (MFP) provided with functions of printer, copying and facsimile have been known. The MFP is connected via a network to multiple computers. A user of each computer sends data of document and the like created by the computer to the MFP via the network. The MFP having received the data stores the data in a memory, forms an image according to the data on a recording medium such as a paper sheet, and outputs the image after fixing.
The MFP is provided with a control section to control each section, a controller to receive a PDL (Page Description Language) data for printing from a computer and analyze the PDL data to create a display list, and the like.
In order to hasten the processing until printing, a rasterization accelerator may be connected to the controller. The controller analyzes the received PDL data to create the display list, and sends this display list to the rasterization accelerator. The rasterization accelerator expands a bitmap data (drawing data) based on the display list, and compresses the image data to send toward the controller. In this way, by connecting the rasterization accelerator, lord of the controller can be reduced, and further, by compressing and sending the image data to the controller, the required sending time can be shortened, thus the processing until the printing can be hastened (refer the example the Patent Document 1).